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Monday, March 28, 2016

Episode Review - Dark Frontier (Voyager Season 5)

For those who are new to my episode reviews, you can find the post where I establish my point criteria here

Episode Overview: While
attempting to obtain a transwarp coil from a Borg vessel, Seven of Nine finds
herself torn between two collectives: the one she knew as a drone and the one
she finds on Voyager.

Episode Score - 9/10.
This is a big budget two-hour story that brings the Borg back into Voyager’s
story big-time. For a Voyager episode, there are some pretty intense action
sequences and a lot of great story-telling. We get to see a lot of development
in Seven of Nine’s backstory and history. We get to see aspects of the Borg
that we have never before seen, and dig deeper into their mythos. Solid
performances by many of the cast, especially Kate Mulgrew and Jeri Ryan.

Relevance - 3 points. References to the past attempts of the Borg to assimilate Earth, the Hansen’s
ship “Raven” and their attempts to study the Borg. Sets up future Borg episodes
(Unimatrix Zero, Endgame). Refers to the Hansens, and shows the fate of Magnus
Hansen (Seven’s father).

Continuity - 2 points. Trek
Universe gets a point for showing a development of the Borg that is consistent
with what has been previously established. Character continuity scores here as
everybody acts as they would. An example of this is B’Elanna Torres who has
always been suspicious of Seven’s loyalties telling Janeway that when Seven
chose to stay behind on the Borg sphere she showed she was never really “one of
us”, and Janeway refusing to give up on Seven despite that. Where this episode
loses a point is story continuity. The episode suggests that the Borg were
rumored to exist as a known entity for at least a decade before this episode, and before the episode
“Q Who” on TNG. It is difficult to believe that a Captain such as Jean-Luc
Picard could have ever been unaware of these rumors. As well as this the Borg
Queen states a couple of inconsistent historical facts. First, that the Borg of
attempted to assimilate humans once before. That, I would assume, is referring
to “The Best of Both Worlds”. In truth, the events of the motion picture “First
Contact” would count as a second attempt. Second mistake was stating that Seven
of Nine was the first drone to regain individuality. I guess Hugh from “I Borg”
and all the drones that followed Lore did not count.

Character Development - 2 points. Major development for Seven of Nine, having her first interaction
with the Borg since leaving the collective and becoming an individual. For the
first time Seven refers to Voyager as being her new “collective”, which I would
assume is on a similar level as family. She states that she cares for the crew
deeply. She also has great conflict in her leaving the crew to rejoin the Borg.
She shows that she has not forgotten her lessons on Voyager by helping members
of Species 10026 escape assimilation on two occaissions. Janeway and Naomi
Wildman have some minor development as well. Everyone else seems to be their
usual selves.

Societal Commentary - 1
point. This has been a hard one for me to nail down. The story is great, but
what does it say about society in general? I’m not too sure. There is a theme
of serving two masters or being torn between two cultures that can resonate
with viewers. Because of this, I can only give it a single point.

Cool Stuff - 3 points. Much of the cool stuff in this episode is courtesy of the Borg. We get to see
the Borg Unicomplex, which is one of the most impressive designs yet. We see
two new ships in the Borg fleet: the Borg interceptor (a scout-type vessel) and
the Borg Diamond (used by the Queen). We see the Borg Queen for the first time
on television, and played for the first time by actress Susanna Thompson (her fourth
character on Star Trek), and to be honest the way her body was formed was
amazing. We see the Hansen family again. We learn a lot about the different
species designations (humans are Species 5618, Ktarians are Species 6961, etc.).
All of these more than make up the necessary requirements for the full three
points.

Rank: Captain (20
points). This was a great episode with wonderful effects, a compelling story,
and a great focus on Seven of Nine. It was great seeing the Borg again. I’m not
the biggest Seven of Nine fan, but I did think this episode was great and did
her character justice.

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About Me

A mild-manered science teacher who is missing his faithful dog Annie, loving his family, and ruler of his own domain (when life says he can). I love just about anything that is geeky, hate zombie and vampire movies in general, and love country music.